Flaccid bags for carrying an article or a multiplicity of articles are very well known in the art.
Flaccid bags comprised of materials such as polyethylene, polypropylene or the like have found widespread use for carrying a wide variety of articles from the point of manufacture all the way to the point of end use by consumers.
One particularly preferred use of such flaccid bags is in the field of disposable absorbent bandages, particularly on products such as sanitary napkins, disposable baby diapers, disposable adult incontinence garments and the like.
Most such bags of disposable absorbent products contain a predetermined quantity of product which is sealed within the bag by the manufacturer. An extension of the bag walls above the manufacturer's seal typically provides an uppermost flap. Conventional practice has been to provide an aperture in the uppermost flap which is large enough to insert the fingers of an average adult human to permit carrying of the bag of product by the handle thus formed in the uppermost flap.
While the shape of the aperture is non-critical when the weight of the bag of product is relatively light, e.g., a few ounces, upwardly convex apertures having a shape is generally shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,595,389 issued to Lehmacher on June 17, 1986 and hereby incorporated herein by reference do not perform particularly well when the weight of the bag of product is great, e.g., several pounds. In particular, the upwardly convex aperture tends to cause discomfort to that portion of the user's body used to support the bag, i.e., typically the fingers, the palm, the wrist or the arm, due to the relatively small area of contact with the tension carrying portion of the handle when the bag is picked up and/or carried.
An additional difficulty posed by such prior art carrying handles for flaccid bags of product is that cutting an aperture in the front and back wall of the uppermost flap requires disposal of the material cut from the flap, thereby necessitating an additional handling operation by either the manufacturer or the end user.
Attempts to overcome some of the aforementioned difficulties have been made, particularly with respect to flaccid bags for handling large quantities of disposable absorbent baby diapers. One such approach involves placing a continuous, upwardly open curvilinear slit in both the front and back walls of the package in the uppermost flap area, but leaving the opposed ends of the slit unconnected to one another. Insertion of the user's fingers causes the flap of material created in the front and back walls of the package to assume a substantially horizontal orientation, thereby creating a fold connecting the opposed ends of each upwardly open slit across the top of the aperture thus formed in the flap. While the increased area of contact between the folded portion of the flap and the supporting portion or portions of the body, typically the fingers, reduces the intensity of the stress experienced by the user's fingers when compared to upwardly convex apertures of the type described in the aforementioned patent to Lehmacher, further improvements in carrying comfort are nonetheless desirable.